Personal & Family PreparednessEmergencies Can Happen Anytime - Are You Ready?

National Preparedness Month

National preparedness month is observed every September. It is a sponsored effort by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to encourage individuals to prepare for emergencies in their homes, businesses, schools, and communities. To help the general public prepare for and respond to emergencies, including natural disasters and potential terrorist attacks.

Why should you prepare??

Preparedness can reduce fear, anxiety, and losses that accompany disasters. You can also decrease the impact of disasters and sometimes avoid the danger completely!

As a team member of the MediSys Health Network, your level of personal and family preparedness helps enhance the overall preparedness efforts at the workplace. During an emergency, the health network relies on you to help sustain normal operations to continue serving patients.

3 Basic Steps For ​Personal & Family Preparedness

1– Make a Plan

In the event of an emergency, natural or otherwise, it is important to make sure that your family's basic needs are being met and that they are safe. The most effective way of to do this is to have a plan in place. It's very easy to panic during an emergency; being mentally and physically prepared may help to minimize that feeling of panic and enable you to keep your family calm, cool, collected, and most importantly, safe. An emergency preparedness plan should include a disaster supply kit, as well as any emergency essentials.

Your family may not be together if a disaster strikes, so it is important to know which types of disasters could affect your area. Create your own personal network for specific areas where you need assistance. Discuss your needs and responsibilities and how people in the network can assist each other in the event of an emergency.

As you prepare your plan tailor your plans and supplies to your specific daily living needs and responsibilities. Create a communications plan and be sure to include how you’ll contact one another and reconnect if separated. Establish a family meeting place that’s familiar and easy to find.

Items to include when developing your plan:

Family Communications Plan

Contact information for all members of the family

Including out-of-state contacts

​Evacuation Routes/Meeting Place

Have two meeting places

Always have another family member or friend to stay with

Know your Hurricane Evacuation Zones and local shelter locations

​List of medical and life saving Information

Allergies

Medical conditions

Prescriptions

Blood type

Health insurance

Physician contact info

​Special Considerations

Child Care

Elder Care

Persons with Disabilities

Limited English Speaking

Pet Care

Developing an easy-to-remember plan is also important. After all, an emergency plan is not effective if it isn't remembered. Practice and maintain your plan, test children's knowledge of the plan every six months so they remember what to do. Conduct regular fire and emergency evacuation drills, test your smoke detectors monthly and change the batteries twice a year. Replace stored water and food every six months.

2– Gather Supplies

In the event that you and your family have to either evacuate or shelter in place, you must always make sure that you have enough supplies for each member of your household. This can be accomplished by packing sturdy, easy to carry “Go-Bag”. Create a Go-Bag before the emergency, one for every member of the household and ready for evacuation in a moment’s notice.

Go-Bag items should include:

List of your Emergency Contacts, including a phone number for an out-of-state contact

Preparing for extended periods of emergency is also important. Natural disasters may knock out power, pollute drinking water, and make it difficult for first responders to reach you. If the event doesn’t require an evacuation. An emergency supply kit for covering each member of your household is just as critical if you are forced to shelter in place (SIP). Your in-house stockpile of supplies, similarly to your go-bag, should have enough supplies to sustain each member of your household for a minimum of three days.

SIP- Emergency supply kits should include:

Water: one gallon per person, per day (3-day supply for evacuation, 2-week supply for home)

Mark your calendar to remind you to check your Go Bag every six months. Replace your medications & snacks with fresh supplies. Check batteries in flashlight, radio & extra batteries to be sure they are still good.

3– Stay Informed

In any kind of Emergency situation, timing and obtaining information is crucial. Receiving timely information about weather conditions or other emergency events can make all the difference in knowing when to take action to be safe. Local police and fire departments, emergency managers, the National Weather Service (NWS), the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and private industry are working together to make sure you can receive alerts and warnings quickly through several different technologies no matter where you are–at home, at school, at work, or in the community.

​There are many different news outlets, social media based pages, classes, and agencies one can either subscribe to or learn different information and tactics in regards to situational awareness and different responses to all types of events that might affect you or your family. It's also important to involve your community in your disaster preparedness plans. Let your neighbors know what you're doing to keep your family safe an encourage them to take precautions of their own.

Building a proactive network of people that may be of assistance may help you and allow you to help others in need. Communication is a vital part of being prepared, no matter what the emergency may be, and it's best to over communicate, knowing that people around you may be stressed and may only retain part of the information being imparted.

For additional information on personal and family preparedness click the links below-